Vanadium Based Full Water Splitting Electrocatalysts

Abstract

Recently, alternative energy research has focused on attempting to produce hydrogen efficiently by splitting water in an electrochemical and photoelectrochemical process. However, the efficiency of water splitting reaction is limited by the challenging anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which is an energy-exhaustive 4 electron process, leading to a kinetically slow step and significant efficiency loss. Thus, an efficient electrocatalyst is required to enhance the OER process. The most active and stable electrocatalysts are based on precious metals like ruthenium and iridium in dimensionally stable anodes working in harsh environments which limits their application to industrial processes. A tremendous development has been obtained in the water-splitting research using transition metal chalcogenides-based nanomaterials. Here, we demonstrate vanadium selenide (V1.04Se2) electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline solution. The catalyst was synthesized hydrothermally using vanadium pentaoxide and selenium dioxide. The synthesized vanadium selenide was characterized by XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, and EDS for morphology, elemental chemical compositions, particle distribution. The OER catalytic activity and stability was performed in 1M KOH solution. The vanadium selenide required only 270 mV overpotential to achieve the 50mA cm-2 OER current and with a low Tafel slope value. It showed excellent stability under continuous oxygen generation condition for an extended period. The details of catalyst synthesis, characterization and activity will be presented in the meeting.